I read this post several days ago and have been thinking about a reply. First of all, I hunt in the woods, not in meadows. I prefer to hunt whitetails rather than be a sniper. Each to his own. I do not mean to judge another or his methods. In recent years, I have been decreasing my arsenal of firearms as I get older. I have sold some and given others to my son. There is a school of thought out there that says you have to have an extremely powerful rifle for deer hunting. It ain' t so. I read things from fella' s on this forum who say they have sore shoulders from shooting their 30' 06. I have to chuckle, since I killed my last buck with a 44 magnum carbine. It went through both lungs and left an exit hole big enough to put your fist into. Place your bullet into the vitals and quit worrying about which caliber is best. Most of them are good. Right now, I own a Winchester Model 70 in 270 caliber, a Ruger 77 in 25' 06, the Marlin 44 magnum carbine, and a somewhat customized (to my standards) 6.5X55 mm Swedish Mauser. In the past, I have owned them all...Remingtons, (an old 788 in 22-250 was the most accurate rifle I ever owned) Brownings, Weatherby Mark V' s (the biggest pieces of expensive junk in the rifle world),... just about everything....in many different calibers. I have to say that my favorite rifle is that 6.5X55. I bought mine years ago at a gun show. I had the barrel shortened and recrowned. It has the original stock, but it has been slimmed, re-worked and refinished. It has a Timney trigger in place of the original military one. It has a top quality Williams receiver sight and a quality front bead sight. That' s right...no scope! I hunt in the woods, and in the woods, 100 yards is a very long way. Nothing beats a receiver sight in snowy, rainy, foul weather at close ranges in the trees and brush... And that is when and where I hunt the most. Check ballistic coefficients. Consider recoil. Consider the game. The 6.5X55 is hard to beat. I suggest you find yourself one on the used market. There are plenty of them out there. Those rifles are MACHINED--not investment cast. The workmanship is great. After you find one, put a little money into it with a good gunsmith. Use it as the core of a rifle made for you and your way of hunting. You' ll have a rifle to cherish for a lifetime....and it won' t cost you an arm and a leg.

My 2 cents,
Clint